I have chronic fatigue issues that go in and out of remission, and the buildup of glutamate seems to by far be the biggest factor for me.
N-acetyl Cysteine and other blood glutamate scavengers (BGS) like malic acid and pyruvate are indispensable in these scenarios. They don't solve the issue but dampen it a bit.
Additionally, a ketogenic diet helped me a lot.
Most of all, high dose niacinamide holds it in remission at times, though I have a theory it's caused by a well-set-in, chronic infection as the reduction in symptoms with niacinamide correlates with the symptoms of fighting off an infection (very swollen lymph nodes, histamine release, sometimes nausea &etc, headaches, some other clear indicators, etc). I've been on it for about 7-8 weeks or so and we're still going!
That said, having energy is a gift that is hard to quantify. Chronic fatigue takes away your ability to think about anything, so you have to have discipline to not think about anything sometimes...which also takes mental energy. It's a bit of a living hell, for suresies.
Here's hoping I get to stay in remission. <3 :')))))
I used to have CFS, but apart from the occasional temporary post viral fatigue that many get, it’s gone. And what is CFS but long term post viral fatigue?
One thing I learned is to ignore figuring out the exact supplements, because you’re playing an impossible balancing game with poor feedback mechanisms. There’s too many inputs.
What helped me was a combination (no one thing can solve it) of therapy (being able to listen to and not suppress emotions), key supplements (magnesium/iron - check out lactoferrin and anaemia of chronic infection), exceptional oral hygiene to reduce inflammation (4 minutes per brush), exceptional gut health (many viruses cause problems with the gut), exercise (eventually), and more…
I never used niacinamide or any of the supplements you used, which shows you that there’s no single approach. I agree that it appears to correlate with an unaddressed infection.
I'd like to argue that it is possible to fight the balance game to an extent.
I've also fought a similar battle to you in a similar manner by "fix everything according to best practices."
When it comes to supplements and nutrition, it may be an impossible game, but what's important in finding the right approach is understanding at least the basic mechanism of action and knowing what you're targeting.
What I'm hearing you say is that you had an app with a performance issue, and you couldn't pinpoint whether it was CPU, Memory, Disk, Network, etc, so you solved it by doing a wholesale system upgrade by giving it all the basics that modern science says are the typical health best practices. Magnesium/Iron, exercise, gut biome, oral hygiene, etc to help. All the things you've listed are anti-inflammatory (of course there's other benefits) but generally, anti-inflammatory things are pretty good at making the body run better.
NAC on the other hand, is a precursor to glutathione, a significant anti-inflammatory molecule in the body, and usually the limiting reagent for glutathione synthesis. So it's also arguable that NAC had an anti-inflammatory effect on the body similar to the effects you received from your regimen.
Finding the right supplements are possible for sure. Usually what is needed though is a thorough analysis/observation of someone's diet and then working back the potential malnourishments that are most likely to occur and in alignment with the symptoms. But usually this takes months and years of learning and understanding to even know where to begin when it comes to suggesting a supplement.
Have enough supplements to cover your bases and ideally cover it off with whole foods when possible.
To be clear, I found it wasn't a good use of time to spend years experimenting with many supplements that end up working temporarily and then having an antagonist effect on something else that appears months down the line.
The best use of time was taking a holistic approach. Supplements didn't save me - but without some basic supplements I wouldn't have been saved. And I agree, some basis in nutrition is important.
I'm curious how you came to start taking these supplements? Were they prescribed by a doctor? Several of these appear to be abundant in food (according to quick search results) so I wonder if it's more of a digestion/absorption issue for you?
It took a reading a few thousand pages of ncbi.nlm.nih.gov papers over a number of years (I made it a habit just to try to crack this thing), this is one of those traditional 'fall through the cracks' kinds of things. My PCP admitted to me that she felt ashamed at not being able to help any further and not knowing what to do, and she's internal medicine.
I have reactions to nearly every food group out there, even things traditionally safe for many (minus the ultra safe things like rice, lamb, etc).
It's definitely not a digestion/absorption issue, in fact I have a reasonable belief that I have barrier permeability issues as things like taking GABA will result in respiratory depression + temporary oxygen starvation for a few seconds - half a minute or so (yay) followed by that emergency contraction of blood vessels that the body does when trying to get oxygen to organs. That's one good indicator of systemic barrier dysfunction, for example, as that is certainly not supposed to happen in healthy people since GABA is not supposed to cross the intestinal barrier (or the BBB for that matter) in healthy individuals (though I wonder if one tiny benefit is making GABA slightly more effective for me for anxiety over, say, the average person due to potentially-increased BBB permeability). Additionally, things like P-glycoprotein inhibitors (like piperine, etc) cause me to react much more strongly to food/environmental things.
Apples would contain, say, the most pyruvate and malic acid (though I react to apples pretty badly, sadly, I'll get arthritis-like symptoms (which makes typing and manipulating objects difficult, for example), though I take an OTC 5-LOX inhibitor nowadays that is actually surprisingly quite effective at preventing things like that from happening in accidental food exposures. Still not enough to have apples straight though, lol).
So it's things like that. Most of this is things like looking at the Krebs cycle, finding upstream things to targets that I want that seem to perform well (like oxaloacetate, which is sold at an outrageous price), and then putting them through the empirical test pipeline to see if they hold up.
Things like niacinamide for example I'm taking 1.5-2. grams a day which would be hard to get from food, pyruvate is also hard to get from food as well. I love the idea of food as medicine, but unfortunately it's mostly calories in (and thankfully I don't seem to react to multivitamins, thank God).
I've tried several thousands of dollars worth of supplements over the last several years trying to find combinations that work. This is most certainly harder than most of the machine learning problems that I work on, as the loss signal is not all that clear, really (unfortunately)!
I am glad to have found something that seems to have a positive impact, however!
It sounds like you’ve looked into it thoroughly, but have you had a blood iron test as well? My iron levels were not below the normal range, but taking an iron supplement (Proferrin) was profoundly impactful for me. I went from needing daily 1-2hr naps back to a normal sleep cycle (and can even go on <7hrs without feeling fatigue during the day).
Yes I tend to consume half a pound to a pound of red meat per day (calories in -- rather extreme food sensitivities unfortunately), so my iron levels are good.
I have been struggling with many symptoms for close to a decade now. The worst one is acid reflux - only during the night, and when I wake literally every single morning my mouth tastes like I've been gargling concentrated vomit all night which is probably somewhat accurate. I think it's impacting my sleep as well.
Additionally I have seemingly incurable fungal infections on my feet, private areas etc. It's manageable but it makes me think a candida overgrowth could make sense. I also have what my doctor thinks is seborrheic dermatitis, causing a red rash that's spread over most of my face and scalp. Flakes a lot.
I wonder if there's something in this thread that could help. I asked my physician about antifungal pills as I haven't had any luck with creams etc but he wanted me to try to remove dairy from my diet. That seems to have had some effect, but the only manifestation of that effect is that if I do consume dairy my digestion acts up for a day or two. Hasn't helped the reflux or face/scalp rashes.
If anyone has any suggestions I'm open for anything.
Obligatory "this is not medical advice", the human body is a wonderful, horrible mess of incomprehensible, interrelated systems, etc. etc.
For sebderm check out r/sebderm. From what I understand sebderm is also a fungal overgrowth, albeit a different species. (The apparent overlap between sebderm and candidiasis would point to an immune deficiency, which suggests mineral deficiency. (Which suggests digestive issues or food sensitivities, the way celiac damages the gut and severely reduces mineral uptake, issues digesting dairy can also result from undiagnosed celiac...) Have you had blood work done?
Digestive issues may also point to a Thiamine (B1) deficiency. There's some interesting work with thiamine megadoses. (I know megadoses trigger the pseudoscience alert bells, but there's real science behind this.) Something about how the mechanisms responsible for Thiamine uptake can stop working when you have a deficiency, which causes the deficiency to persist even if you return to eating normal levels. This can then be resolved with a megadose (which are considered harmless).
Also, are you getting enough sun? I have found this does wonders for me. (Alternatively supplement with Vitamin D and make sure you research the right dose, because the recommended dose was too low for many years).
If it's some sort of infection, did you try a round of broad spectrum antibiotics?
Also, read up on the "carnivore diet" if you haven't already specifically the anicdotes of people online. I found it removed basically all my chronic health issues, which tells me I've become intolerant of certain foods. Re introducing is tedious though.
I currently eat half a pound to a pound of meat per day as it seems to currently be the most reliable way to get calories in for me with minimal reaction. It feels rather horrible from the 'yuck, bleh' feeling of eating a little more unhealthfully compared to that lovely glow (by comparison) that having vegetables will sorta bring on.
I can have some vegetables (yay salads! I love certain kinds of salads, have to be picky about dressings and toppings though), but at the very minimum meeting caloric needs is the core goal for me.
As far as infection goes, I've had many antibiotics over the years of different classes. I believe it's fungal (mayyyybe with a parasitic co-infection of some kind?) as that anti-parasitics/antifungals are the classes that seem to introduce the strongest response in me.
Also, I cultured some of the skin from my foot and it grew yeast, in great abundance! (not the most reliable test, but it works okay...ish, lol).
Additionally, I had the same systematic spike in pain in my leg when taking niacinamide originally as I did when surface-treating the fungal foot infection, which cleared up pretty rapidly underneath it.
Things like thujone/juglone/etc seem to be quite helpful too, though, so I do worry about a potential opportunistic parasitic component to it as well, as I seem to respond in some way to drugs in that class (even the ones potentially without apparent antifungal activity). Parasitic infections actually are quite common in the US compared to our expectations -- just look at pinworms or toxoplasmosis (even though it is quite low here in the US compared to the rest of the world)!
I think something that I've slowly been finding is hard about epidemiology is that immunocompromised individuals can be subject to a whole host of odd infections & etc in comparison to a standard, healthier population.
For what it's worth, I've had a great experience with sauna/cold therapy. You seem well researched on the topic, so im sure you're aware of the plethora of studies correlating reduced inflammatory response and heat/cold therapy, but if you've never given it a shot yourself I'd highly reccomend. I went so far as to build a small sauna for myself, and have found that my energy has increased drastically day to day, and I have had significantly reduced inflammation generally. (GI and dermatitis issues previously.)
This is an excellent idea, and I haven not visited this one in a long while. I've been interested and have access to an infrared sauna now, so I will be trying this!
Thank you so very much for the recommendation, this is a great one! <3 :')))) <3 :D
I'm waiting for diagnosis of me/cfs or long covid, although it could be some kind of allergy fatigue as my symptoms are much more severe during april to late october.
Been looking at pushing the button to buy some niacinamide for a while now and I may have to go for it to try.
Of course, and much love! Pyruvate is fantastic too, and w/ niacinamide if you're going for the nicotinamide riboside route don't forget to try taking ribose with it -- it apparently _really_ makes the difference for some!
So much mitochondrial implication in any post-viral fatigue syndrome, it seems like somewhere in the stack is oftentimes disrupted, thankfully it can be managed though!
Night and day for me. On the Appalachian Trail, I had to count steps and watch my heartrate on the climbs to keep from triggering PEMS (you don't want that out in the semi-wilderness). I had extra food and would take days off when I did trigger PEMS/go mildly hypoxic/lactic acidosis, whatever. Not fun, but boy was it a pristine place to take break days, in the perfectly gorgeous wilds (surrounded by interesting and talkative, friendly people. heaven).
In any case, on the AT it took so much discipline. I switched to keto after getting norovirus because why not on the momentum of not eating for several days, and some of the ridge runners helped me out as well (they are true trail angels I think). The keto really softened my PEMS a lot, I think basically by preventing the lactic acidosis spiral because...yay, no glycogen in the energy cycle anymore. That was my motivation/thought at least, and it did really pay off, it seems (for whatever reason!).
Pyruvate was my second best shot, it would really reverse a lot of problems to a manageable degree so I could do more basic stuff and focus on rest days, etc.
Eliminating free glutamates was _huge_ for me. Maybe not for everyone, but for me, absolutely. This is yeast extract, miso, soy sauce, hydrolyzed corn protein, anything that is umami basically is glutamate or glutamate-related in some form or fashion. For whatever reason, blood glutamate scavengers seem to be well-implicated in reducing symptoms of me/cfs quite well (and fatigue in general? i think?), this is not quite as well-known as I think it should be, but check the research out on that for yourself!
I'd have energy crashes after having, say, beef jerky (which already has glutamate, just competing with the other amino acids during breakdown), which often has tons of soy sauce or the like. Everything seemingly has MSG (or the equivalent), though they can legally lie if they put it in via a different source, apparently.
(Don't get me wrong, I love MSG. But it can make the lives of me and other people with fatigue stuff absolute freaking hell).
All that to say, niacinamide sorta waltzed up and smashed the delicate glass wall that I'd been balancing things around. I'm very grateful for it, it sorta feels like easy mode (minus all of the symptoms lol) compared to the other stuff.
Please feel free to ping me on twitter if you ever want to! <3 :'))))) Happy to chat further about this, and much love! Thank you so very much for your encouraging words, ME/CFS, long covid, post viral stuff is a hellhole of a syndrome as it basically feels like it sucks your soul out of you physically (experientially, at least, lol), and leaves you dead-alive. There is hope, and much CFS does not last forever! And even if it is there, I can assure you that there is a way to enjoy and love life, it just becomes much more of an inward and spiritual (if necessary regardless of the requiring circumstances) journey.
Sorry, that was a lot, I, er, maybe am recalibrating to my energy levels. Also, I'm very passionate about this particular topic! <3 :')))) :'))))) :'))))) :')))) <3
The world is much more complex than this, unfortunately, there are a significant number of etiologies which result in CFS-like symptoms, it's one of the less studied umbrellas out there.
Lyme, babesiosis, rocky mountain spotted fever, etc, all negative. I also did a urine Lyme DNA test a while back but looking back on it, apparently that was not an extremely reliable test (though the western blot has a decent amount of false negatives as well).
I believe it's a chronic yeast infection that's slowly traveled up under the skin of my left leg for the last 7 years or so. It started out as athletes foot in college, and then when I got past the point of being too overwhelmed to treat it, it had set in pretty well.
I wondered if the two were correlated, but over the past few years I've had increasing leg pain in that area, and the same pain in my toe where the infection was. Of course, the nature of this infection is that it seems to be resistant to many OTC classes of antifungals, so it did not budge. The most effective agent was carvacrol/thymol, which is extremely broad range (even against MRSA), but it macerated the skin to a point of strong pain, bleeding, etc, all that jazz. Even when it cleared up on the outside, there was a deep white patch under the skin that you could see under the (healthy-seeming) skin, which, of course, is its own unique class of horror.
About a year ago or so, I finally broke and decided to get rid of the skin infection no matter what. I basically mixed isopropyl alcohol and table vinegar and put it in the skin after removing the top layer of dead skin, which as it was an open wound was extremely painful. I used the reasoning that I could temporarily damage the nerves with overexcitation via the isopropyl alcohol stimulation, and that reasoning panned out after an excruciating several days, after which my nerves were damaged enough to no longer hurt under the raw vinegar and alcohol combination.
That at least cleared up the surface infection until I was on the Appalachian Trail this year (which, yes, I did my two months on it with chronic fatigue + post exertional malaise (!!!!) !), where, more than a year later, the infection inexplicably came back again.
I found niacinamide in my search for treatment-resistant infections, and it cleared up the surface infection within an astounding 2-3 days. I started taking it orally, and became extremely sick, it felt like I was being poisoned and doing a mini-chemotherapy of sorts, so I slowed down and began taking silymarin and NAC to help preserve liver and kidney function (which seems to still remain okay so far).
The process of treating it has been painful, as the initial days caused a huge flare in leg pain in my left leg corresponding with swelling of the lymph nodes almost exclusively on the left side of my body, oddly enough (though it seems to have balanced out, a bit). I was in the emergency room on my birthday last year due to the leg pain, and they couldn't figure it out so they offered a potential umbrella diagnosis of complex regional pain syndrome.
It's hard to keep up with dosing as I do have a bit of an aversion to feeling sick -- it quite literally feels like I'm being poisoned! -- but, my CMP from even this week came back okay, and I'm getting a feeling of underlying 'rightness' despite the transient negative symptoms (including having to pee every 2-3 hours...not fun).
I've had maybe two dozen doctors, both in and out of the ER (6 visits in the last year or so), or so give me that look of not quite being able to know what to do. I applied to the internal medicine program at the Mayo Clinic a few months ago and got a form letter turning me down. It's not due to incompetence, it's just that there is a long tail of extremely complicated conditions that categorically fit an umbrella of symptoms, but are extremely hard to actually track down (and the semi-binarization of medical specialties makes cross-disciplinary diagnosis extremely difficult for these vague kinds of conditions).
I'm sitting here now and can feel the leg pain when I focus on it, for example. But I think treating it is worth it -- especially as one has to work to live in many circumstances! That said, this does not underpin how grateful I am to at least have one avenue -- whether it's temporary or not -- where I can have energy.
This also doesn't cover things like the mast cell sensitivity (diagnosed as not MCAS by _two_ separate immunologists, though they both fall in the tryptase-test-philosophy camp). I react to everything, including All Free and Clear detergent, for example, and with food and such sometimes it's just eating tons of meat (it's pure muscle protein and fat and doesn't have things I can react to like lots of plants do) and multivitamins to cover the nutritional gaps.
I wish it were as simple as just having Lyme disease, as I think that would be much, much easier for me personally. But, I suppose to keep living we have to accept the limitations that we have (and unfortunately this is not the only journey of limitation I'm on -- I also have autism to a mild-moderate degree! That would be enough challenge for a normal lifetime as it is. D'''':), and I had a number of years where I really struggled (like, really really struggled). But all of that said, I think although it's taken a few years, I've come around the bend in starting that process of eventually accepting the challenges I've been given, and I am on currently on that particular upward walk of learning to enjoy the life that I do have access to in the meantime. It's not perfect, and I have a lot of big bumps in the road, for sure, but the slope for me is pointed up, and that's what I wished for for years. And I'm enjoying life a lot more than I have in the past, on average! :')))) <3 <3 <3 <3 :'))))
I want you to know that this was a fantastic HN comment, and I truly hope you figure this out.
I don't have any chronic infections that I'm aware of (maybe the athletes foot) but I have experienced a stark enough improvement in overall sense of wellbeing from taking NAC that I sort of characterize my own recent history in to pre-and-post NAC phases. It's a great molecule.
Thank you for your kind words. Having my comment praised as a fantastic HN comment is one of the highest honors I could ask for, I do put the effort in and you made my afternoon with your compliment. Thank you so much and much love! <3 :'))))
NAC is quite fantastic. Not just for energy, but for autism too, in which glutamate dysfunction is also implicated! Some people do just as well with sulforaphane as well, which I really need to do.
Jarrow has a great NAC extended release brand, I've been spotty with it recently but it feels really good when I take it. Feels like my autism symptoms go down half a notch (i.e. the opposite direction of aspartame, lol), my energy goes up, and I just sorta feel more 'real', for lack of a better word.
Very great medication/molecule, all around, it does so much more than that, too (for example, NAC is just glutathione without the glutamate component IIRC, and that's how it binds the glutamate out of your bloodstream. 2 huge birds, one spicy sulfurey stone). Let's hope it stays open access, for all of the benefits it has.
Whoa, thank you for the comprehensive answer. I reach for Lyme since it's one of the most common and under-diagnosed diseases in this category, but you are definitely in your own category here. Good luck, having something outside the reach of standard antibiotics already makes doctors afraid, and this would probably give an immunologist nightmares.
~~This is not true.~~ (edited to clarify, see [2]) Robert Sapolsky's research approximated calorie expenditure using a highly inaccurate methodology. Troubat et al. 2008[1] estimated calorie expenditure by measuring chess players' respiration and found that they only burned 10% more calories than normal.
And anyway, the claim that chess players lose 1 pound per day does not pass a basic sanity check. 1 pound of fat = 3500 calories. If you raised all that energy instantaneously in the brain, it would raise brain temperature by around 2500 C (the average brain weighs ~1.5 kg and the brain is mostly water so I figure 1 Calorie ~= 1 degree C per kg). Obviously the energy doesn't release all at once and it wouldn't all be released by the brain, but that's still an implausibly high energy expenditure.
[2] When I said "this is not true", I was thinking of the claim from the linked article that chess players burn 6000 calories per day, which is definitely false. Upon re-reading, I realized the parent comment did not actually make this claim. I am agnostic as to whether chess players lose 1 pound per day during tournaments, but if they do, it's definitely not because they're burning 1 extra pound of fat. It's plausible that they're eating much less and/or losing water weight.
To be clear, this wasn't Sapolsky's research. In one of his books he referenced the findings of another researcher (physicist, chess GM, and textbook author Leroy DuBeck), with caveats about that figure being extrapolated and thus not a direct measurement at all.
As per usual, this claim has been repeated all over sports/medicine journalism with improper attribution and no mention of the caveats.
I’ve been tapping my foot ferociously since I was a kid and the most I’ve been “on” is caffeine. Lots of it, though, but the taping helps me even when I’m not drinking coffee.
Tapping or that thing where you keep the ball of the foot on the floor and then shake the leg like trying to double-bass hit a-la John Bonham? That's the one I do. Annoys the heck out of everyone around cause it shakes things. So they say Stop! Then get frustrated with my too-loud typing or humming or... whatever, gotta let that excess energy out somehow.
Interrupting my focus state with "why are you doing that?" - doing what?
That's the perfect description :)
And yes, it does annoy everyone. I had a stranger ask me to stop in a movie theater once, the seats were connected and it would shake the whole line. My wife just lays her hand on my leg and not a word needs to be spoken.
As I'm getting older, the tip of the foot can start to get a little numb if I'm too excited.
This was me! Complete with annoyning everybody and my wife putting her hand on my leg to make me notice I'm doing it.
I did eventually "break the habit"[1] by paying undue attention to my leg for years and intentionally stopping when it started. What I don't know is if it would have gone away on its own, or if my effort fixed things.
[1] It comes back when I'm unusually tired or stressed, though.
Andrew Huberman notes this is an effective weight loss technique due to calories spend bouncing one's heel/tapping due. Apparently, the calf muscle is unique in that the repetitive action translates into calories burnt.
Not that its representative necessarily but have you been screened for AD(H)D, the leg and foot tapping/shaking was always a big thing for me. And its not parkinsons lol, otherwise I've had it my whole life ;)
I haven't, but who knows, we're all a bit neurodivergent here. I can get completely dispersed but also deeply focused to the point of jumping on my seat whenever the phone or door rings.
It's strong enough to measurably increase your metabolic rest rate and consequent calorie consumption even without obsessive foot tapping.
Also, the foot tapping behavior can be related to caffeine consumption even if you also do it when not taking caffeine. Some people (like me) metabolize caffeine a lot slower than average, so its effects last a lot longer (twice longer or so, I think). Also, caffeine notably causes sleep disruption. And caffeine withdrawal can also cause irritability.
Caffeine can also increase anxiety or anxiety-related behaviors, and even if anxiety or these behaviors are not exclusively experienced while taking caffeine, it can still increase the likelihood and magnitude of its effects. These behaviors can also persist in the absence of substance intake for a variety of (psychological) reasons.
Well, then let me challenge your "not remotely as strong" claim.
A typical cup of coffee contains about the same proportion of caffeine compared to a lethal caffeine dose than the proportion of one Aderall dosage compared to a lethal amphetamine dose.
The estimated average lethal dose for LSD in humans is only 100 mg, based on rodent studies. Far less than caffeine and even amphetamines.
LSD does cause significant psychoactive effects with one thousandth of that amount, which suggests that for a typical isolated dose, LSD is safer than caffeine and amphetamines. Not to mention that LSD is not as addictive.
But I don't think that invalidates my underlying point regarding caffeine, even if the lethal dose is not a perfect measure.
Could you please stop posting in the flamewar style and/or otherwise breaking the site guidelines? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
I don't think I've clicked a no-context youtube link in years.
Sometimes when it seems like it might be worth clicking, I just throw the hash into a search engine.
A pound of fat is 3500 calories. If a chess player eats nothing at all they are unlikely to burn that many calories in a day. Chess players do eat during a tournament. Therefore weight loss must be water.
How else would it work? You burn fat (as in: you turn it into energy, powering your own living cells), turning it into CO2 and H2O, which are then breathed out or expelled with urine.
What? Yes it is. Your fat cells are turned into ATP via Beta-oxidation and used for cellular energy. The excess carbon from the processes is then exhaled as CO2 during normal respiration and the water is sweated or urinated.
When you lose about 3500 calories of energy via this process, you have burned a pound of fat.
Do people who burn 3500 calories weigh one pound less? Are you sure? (that belief is mainly based on an old study where fat was removed from a body and combusted). It's been observed, with newer more accurate measures, that fat burning doesn't correlate perfectly with weight loss.
From what I can tell, weight changes happen only partly due to CO2 exchange and partly due to rates of consumption and excretion.
The biophysical origin (I'm a biophysicist) of weight change as a function of energy use, eating and excretion is a bit more complicated than that.
Like you said, it’s a bit more complicated than that and every body is different. But burning roughly 3500 calories will result in the body weighing roughly 1lb less (accounting for food and water intake and loss).
If it didn’t work this way, every bodybuilder and fitness enthusiast on the planet would have a very different approach to their diet.
Assuming that they burned purely fat for energy, what else could it be? Are you saying that it's not just fat being burned, or that 'burning' the fat is not going from '1' to '0' in terms of weight?
1. They're stressed and therefor eating less, especially if they're spending the daytimes of the tournament playing games - hardly conducive to appetite, and in fact I expect many will avoid food purposefully to try to not get that sleepy-full feeling.
2. To a much lesser degree, increased stress == increased heartrate == increased BMR.
3. Maybe, and I hate to speculate because of the stigma (personally I don't care if chess players are doing drugs), some amphetamine use, or at least caffeine, all of which can suppress appetate further.
I personally very much doubt that it's the thinking hard that's actually burning calories.
Unfortunately, I can't even read the linked post! It's paywall'd.
I can drop 10 pounds this week trivially by triggering a water flush (change in diet), essentially at will. Wife absolutely hates it, but that’s water weight.
Yes, it can. It provides a feeling of excitement or enthusiasm for whatever you're doing, and can be channeled into working hard for long periods of time. Especially if your job already brings you some satisfaction, then doing your job on amphetamine will provide more. Pilots in the airforce (and possibly other warfighters) are given amphetamine to augment their performance.
I think of it as basically stealing energy or enthusiasm from the future, though. You might feel energized and focused now, but it comes at the expense of less energy and focus when the drug wears off. The withdrawal effect is pretty mild if you take prescription doses of it though, e.g. Adderall (which is amphetamine). At normal moderate doses, taken in the morning, almost all of that energy can be recouped during sleep (though not all). I wouldn't want to take it daily for a long period of time though, otherwise you'll build up an 'energy deficit' that could lead to a crash.
P.S. I know people who have essentially destroyed their lives by becoming addicted to amphetamine or meth. It's a dangerous drug.
As someone who basically requires dextroamphetamine to function, I’ve always found the notion of becoming addicted to it crazy, nonetheless. If I don’t set alarms to take it, I will forget, for days at a time until I suddenly realize why I haven’t gotten much done and my memory has been bad this week.
I wonder if there is something about the dopamine issues of the ADHD brain that prevents an addiction to substances that aid it.
If you don't, it's negatively impacting mental performance - but it's really good at helping you to deliver slightly subpar performance for grossly extended periods of time. (Common uses: Crisis situations where you cannot step away. Cramming for exams)
I suppose you could call this a different form of concentration, but AIUI it's more energy than concentration.
Yes, and sometimes people view it as a zero net drug, but it's not always a 1:1 relationship of borrowing from the future. It's significantly helped me, and there are some downsides, but the benefits have been far greater than the negatives (and having the extra motivation is...incredible since my brain does not really do that all that much naturally).
It depends. Raising those neurotransmitters (dopamine > norepinephrine > serotonin) is a matter of balance.
If a person already has good levels and healthy receptors, and they suddenly raise them too much, it just makes people obsessive and actually not focus well on the important task at hand.
It's a double-edged sword, always with warnings and side-effects.
When I first started taking stimulants for ADHD and was trying to get the right dose I was confused because nothing was happening at first but finally reached a tipping point where it was working, but it was like a more intense version of my normal hyper-focus I would get at 8pm after "warming up" for 12 hours, after a couple of days it settled in between where I get the easy ability to switch attention without getting annoyed, or not realizing.
Actually, the sort of obsessiveness it produces diminishes the ability to switch attention, so people get obsessed over a particular train of thought and are unable to evaluate other strategies.
Basically you end up obsessed over that one strategy, and motivated to do it, instead of taking a step back to re-assess.
It is a bit confusing to me because it is often said that the brain draws about the same amount of energy, no matter what. Perhaps people also eat less during tournaments.
I've played in an intense chess tournament where both players have two hours on the clock, meaning a game can take up to 4 hours plus a few extra seconds per each move. After some of the games I felt genuinely exhausted despite just sitting in my chair for a few hours, probably because I was thinking and calculating as hard as I could the whole time.
Some high level players like Sam Shankland are known to frequently cite physical fitness as crucial to their ability to perform in high level tournaments, where they might play that type of intense games all day for multiple days in a row.
> Obviously, our results are only correlational and cannot be taken as proof that what limits cognitive control exertion is the need to prevent glutamate accumulation.
I didn't read the original story but I wonder if it included that little gem
Muscles actually require brainpower. Any serious weightlifter can tell you about the benefits of mind-muscle connection, and how neurologically taxing lifting heavy weights is.
> watching letters appear on a computer screen every 1.6 seconds and documenting when one matched a letter that had appeared three letters ago. The other 16 participants were asked to perform a similar, but easier task. Both teams worked for just over six hours
Reminds me of a card game I played as a kid called Egyptian Ratscrew, where one of the possible rules is to slap the deck if a "sandwich" appeared (e.g. a 3, a J, then another 3), so you always had to keep the card before the last one in your head. I remember variations such as "double sandwiches"—which made the 2-back into a 3-back—and many others.
I use to colloquially call this game "slap deck" as a kid. The general approach taken was to add a ton of house rules, such that it was a large test of working memory to keep all rules in your head. We kept some simple rules to keep the game approachable for younger children, and older children/teens would continue to add house rules to make the game more complex. In addition, game play would be very fast, and often times patterns would be missed because no one recognized it quick enough.
Some of the rules that would sometime appear that I can recall
* Put 1 or 2 jokers in. Jokers are slappable
* Doubles are slappable (3, 3)
* Three (or four) face cards are slappable
* Three (or four) cards of the same suite are slappable
* Three (or four) consecutive cards are slappable (2, 3, 4, 5) or (5, 4, 3, 2)
I would like to ask everyone to stop for a moment and think if in their line of work they are required to perform tasks like this. Your job might be even shittier than you currently feel like it is
The difference is the reward afterward. Learning to play a complex piece on an instrument is mentally taxing, but getting it right gives you that sense of accomplishment that can't really be matched with anything else. Same with debugging a program you are writing, or solving other types of problems.
Doing hours of arithmetic homework as a child didn't give me that reward signal, so for me that was torture back then.
I took a similar one, I remember "trying" really hard to prove to myself that I wasn't faking but about 30 seconds later I was looking about the room and struggling to recall if the screen changed at all. Was a nice confirmation of my issues.
> Meanwhile, players also eat less during tournaments, simply because they don't have the time or the appetite. "The simple explanation is when they're thinking about chess, they're not thinking about food," says Ewan C. McNay, assistant professor of psychology in the behavioral neuroscience program at the University of Albany.
That seems far more likely. I'm sure many of us can relate to working through lunch when we have an intense deadline, and not even realizing we're hungry until hours later.
> According to Ashley, India's first grandmaster, Viswanathan Anand, does two hours of cardio each night to tire himself out so he doesn't dream about chess; Kasimdzhanov drinks tea only during tournaments and plays tennis and basketball every day. Chirila does at least an hour of cardio and an hour of weights to build muscle mass before tournaments.
And apparently they're exercising quite a lot as well.
This hardly seems to support that it's just brain power. And my recollection is that focus does not significantly increase glucose uptake in the brain - though stress can obviously increase heart rate, but that's separate, one can focus without being stressed.
the brain has enough blood and oxygen, it uses that to depletes other resources when firing
so no.
think of it like a computer, drawing more electricity faster won’t help the physical properties of the RAM or transport bus (much). it already has enough of that, the bottleneck is elsewhere. but good breathing does help cognition
compared to muscles the brain is a small surface area with a wide bus. when exercising, the demands are about getting more oxygen to more muscles, which is merely transported by blood, and the heart beats faster to pump blood faster, the breathing is an attempt to oxygenate more blood. thats the difference between muscular activity and brain activity
I can say that when I do a task with a high level of difficulty and get stuck I get much more tired than when things go smooth even when working the same number of hours.
i'm glad studies like these exist, and hope we'll see more and more like it in future. But as the article mentioned, the more interesting part is the follow-up. How do you improve your decision-making and reduce tiredness?
I've found that exercise helps. I try to jog and lift weights regularly, but usually I exercise for a few months and stop for a few months. When I don't exercise, I notice I'm a lot more tired and feel significantly colder than when I work out.
Also, if I don't eat enough food, I feel tired throughout the day as well. It makes me feel like I can't focus or think, but then I'm fine after I eat. Maybe it's because I'm skinny.
Ladies and gentlemen, gather 'round as we reflect upon the profound wisdom imparted by the Log from Ren and Stimpy. In the sacred realm of the animated, behold the Log — a symbol, a metaphor, a wooden beacon lighting the path to enlightenment.
Just as the Log rolls through the whimsical landscapes of Ren and Stimpy's world, so too must we navigate the terrain of job applications. The Log teaches us perseverance, for even when faced with absurd challenges, it continues its journey with stoic determination.
Applying to jobs, my friends, is akin to riding the Log of life. We must embrace the twists and turns, the uncertainties of the job market, with the same unyielding spirit. For just as the Log is steadfast in its purpose, so should we be in our pursuit of meaningful employment.
And lo, let us draw inspiration from the Log Song itself — a melodic reminder that sometimes, in the chaos of job hunting, it's crucial to find joy in the simplicity of the process. Whether it's singing about our resumes or crafting cover letters, let the Log be our guide to finding humor and joy in the journey.
In conclusion, my dear congregation, as we face the job market, let the Log's unwavering resolve inspire us to roll forward with resilience and a sprinkle of absurdity. For in the grand tapestry of employment, each of us is but a log on the river of life, floating toward new opportunities and adventures. Amen.
If you put some liquid on a solid surface and it doesn't form a bead, the tiny attracting forces between the two materials overcame the innate desire of the liquid to keep its own bits and pieces together, and so the surface is now wet: https://chem.libretexts.org/Courses/Montana_State_University...
In that sense even liquid metal will wet the heatsink and/or the CPU's heat spreader.
Water itself isn't wet, but it makes other things wet by sticking to surfaces and creating a layer of liquid on them. Wetness is the ability of a liquid to adhere to the surface of a solid, and since water can do that, it makes things feel wet.
N-acetyl Cysteine and other blood glutamate scavengers (BGS) like malic acid and pyruvate are indispensable in these scenarios. They don't solve the issue but dampen it a bit.
Additionally, a ketogenic diet helped me a lot.
Most of all, high dose niacinamide holds it in remission at times, though I have a theory it's caused by a well-set-in, chronic infection as the reduction in symptoms with niacinamide correlates with the symptoms of fighting off an infection (very swollen lymph nodes, histamine release, sometimes nausea &etc, headaches, some other clear indicators, etc). I've been on it for about 7-8 weeks or so and we're still going!
That said, having energy is a gift that is hard to quantify. Chronic fatigue takes away your ability to think about anything, so you have to have discipline to not think about anything sometimes...which also takes mental energy. It's a bit of a living hell, for suresies.
Here's hoping I get to stay in remission. <3 :')))))